Tuesday, January 3, 2012

The balloon didn't stop floating all night,so they nicknamed it "Ovechkin".

Scene: Saturday night, shortly before midnight, in a spacious home in New York. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is welcoming guests for his annual New Year's Eve party. Deputy commissioner Bill Daly arrives.

Bill Daly: Hi Gary… thanks for the invite. How's the party going?

Gary Bettman: So far so good. It got off to a rough start when Ilya Bryzgalov tried to convince everyone that it was a waste of time to celebrate the passage of a single year from within the unfathomably vast history of the cosmos. But we had Milan Lucic take a run at him, and ever since then it's been smooth sailing.

Daly: Nice. Mind if I help myself to some punch?

Bettman: Of course, be my guest.

Daly: Thanks pal. Uh, do you have any ice?

Dan Craig(appearing suddenly): I'm on it!

Craig reaches into a container with a small pair of tongs and selects several immaculately formed ice cubes, which he proceeds to inspect with a jeweler's eyepiece.

Daly: So… do you just make the ice for every NHL event?

Craig: It's in my contract.Bettman: Uh, Dan, come to think of it… shouldn't you be in Philadelphia right now, making sure we'll have halfway decent ice for the Winter Classic?

Craig: Didn't you hear? There's no game on January 1 this year.

Bettman: Right. That's because we moved it to January 2.

Awkward pause.

Craig: Uh, I should probably go.

Bettman: Sigh. Brendan, can you help Bill get some ice for his drink?

Brendan Shanahan: Of course! How many ice cubes do you want? Ten?

Daly: Ten? No, that would be way too many.

Shanahan: One?

Daly: Well, no, that's too few…

Shanahan: I CAN NEVER PLEASE ANY OF YOU PEOPLE!

Shanahan throws the drink to the floor and storms off.

Bettman: He's a little stressed out lately.

Daly: Was his hair always that grey?

Taylor Hall: Ten! Nine! Eight! …

Bettman: Uh, Taylor, it's not midnight yet.

Hall(looking up from a sheet of paper): What? No, I was just reading out Nikolai Khabibulin's goals against during games in December.

Bettman: Ouch.

Daly: Hey, are you going to be showing a movie or something downstairs?

Bettman: No, why?

Daly: Well, there's all these people all sitting silently in your basement in the dark, staring at the wall.

Bettman: Oh, that. That's the quiet room for all the star players who are currently out with head injuries.

Bettman motions at a sign on the door reading "Players with concussions".

Daly: Wow. There must be dozens of them in there. That's a major problem, Gary. Please tell me the league has a plan for dealing with this.

Bettman: Of course, Bill. It would be grossly irresponsible of us not to!

Bettman pulls out a magic marker, walks over to the sign, and changes it to read "Players with concussion-like symptoms".

Wow, frank, that was hilarious...especially when he talks to the fans (the ones that are made up of spinning blades which propel air) of the habs...and some nice jabs at habs fans, but nothing worse than what we do to storefront windows on ste catherine after a win or a loss or a tie

That's a riot. Don't know why, but the thought of Randy Cunneyworth talking to a bunch of "fans" made me crack up. I don't speak French, but I don't think that "les ventilateurs de les Canadiens" is a good translation for "Habs fans".